How Fire Fueled Humans' Evolution5:15

The discovery of fire and how it catapulted mankind into unified is the theme of Nat Geo ORIGINS upcoming series "The Journey of Mankind." Host Jason Silva discusses the eight-part series on Lunch Break with Tanya Rivero. Photo: National Geographic Channel

Exactly what shape the original common ancestor to modern humanity and apes had is a mystery. But AI is casting new light on our origins. Picture: National Museum of ScotlandSource:Supplied

IT’S an image imprinted on our brains: the steady march of evolution from chimp to human. But it’s not quite right.

Monkeys don’t belong on the tree. They have tails.

Chimps, which don’t, are with Bonobos our closest living relatives. And, as such, both should be standing alongside us in the march of life.

Stretching out behind should be a gradually converging branch of earlier variations.

Ultimately, between six and eight million years ago, the branches almost certainly converge on one common ancestor.

We know almost nothing about what that was.

The common depiction of the evolution of man from a chimp. While evocative, it’s not entirely accurate.Source:Supplied

No fossils have yet been found.

However, we do have many hominid fossils from the branches of the evolutionary tree extending both towards and from that point.

So, scientists in California have begun training an artificial intelligence to identify the defining aspects of human and ape ancestors. How our shared physiology converges back in time could offer clues about our original forebear.

There’s something funny about our family tree.Source:Supplied

TAKING A BITE OUT OF HISTORY

The researchers used machine learning to teach an artificial intelligence to identify and classify fossilised hominid teeth dating from 25 million years ago. It then sifted through these to find patterns of development.

“For decades, palaeontologists have used the chimpanzee as a model for the chimpanzee-human last common ancestor (LCA) because they are our closest living primate relative,” the study reads. “However, relative dental proportions of Miocene hominoids are more similar to extant gorillas and follow a strong trajectory through evolutionary time.”

Artificial intelligence has given us much to ponder about our human origins. Picture: David CairdSource:News Corp Australia

“While we aren’t able to say exactly what the teeth of the LCA looked like until we find the fossils — just one reason why palaeontological excavations are so important — we can generate some hypothesis based on what other apes looked like.”

The difference between the modern DNA of humans and chimpanzees is just 1.2 per cent. Between humans and gorillas, it’s about 1.6 per cent.

So there is plenty of research still to be done to find out what our oldest common ancestor looked like — in terms of size, build and shape.

But AI is already on the job.

“Machine learning is a formidable tool for pattern recognition in large datasets. We developed and expanded on these methods, applying machine learning pattern recognition to a problem in palaeoanthropology and evolution,” the study reads.